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Tag: Kalikot

  • Travel Log – The day the children of Rachuli learned how to speak Buffalese!

    Travel Log – The day the children of Rachuli learned how to speak Buffalese!

    28-5-2017.
    7 days after leaving Kathmandu we were able to start teaching at the school. Our first school day at Rachuli’s school had cracking-up moments.

    We started with 10th grade, which means some of the students were 17 years old, only 3 years younger than the two nurses we hired. Being so close in age created a previously unseen complicity with the class. Both boys and girls made enquiries and intervened a lot in class; including some fun moments such as when they were trying to guess how many holes female organs have. Answers varied between 2 and 4! 🙂Very few students said 3.

    Other fun moments were related to the fact that our nurses were nervous and did not remember certain words in Nepalese, so they had to ask students! Or when talking about the clitoris and I took the chance to make comments a Nepalese woman would never dare say… these are advantages of being a foreigner: I play “dumb” and say or ask things they would never do.

    After class I went for a walk with my camera and a parade of women and girls came with me. When we were back at my home’s front door, we met the nurses and, suddenly, as we were bidding farewell to my “following”, we heard a buffalo “shouting”. I started imitating it, and the buffalo “replied”, so I went on and ask the nurse to translate to children the following: “Don’t you at Rachuli speak Buffalese? I do!”; and I went on imitating the buffalo’s cries. It really did sound as if he were replying to me. The children and women cracked up, even though they were not completely sure whether I did understand what the animal was telling me! 🙂 Cool.

    Later on, when our “Didi” (Sister) was coming to call us for dinner, it so happened that I opened the door at the same time as she got there. When I ran into her, small and in the dark, telling me “Didi khana Khane” (Sister, come to eat rice!), I screamed in fear, she got startled as well as the nurses in the room, followed by great laughter afterwards. 😀

    There are days so special in this country, that they make you forget how hard sleeping on the floor is, or the rough roads and 5-day journeys, and boring dhal bat (rice with lentil or bean soup. Here, with beans , beans,lentils are not local) twice a day.

    Written by Clara Go. Photos done with FUJIFILM X-Pro1 © Clara Go
Translated to English by Alba Miquel

    West Nepal girls need this kind of program. And we need help to continue the project!

    Now you can donate for paying one month salary to the nurse, or for some hygiene kit or for the menstrual cup control in September: http://beartsy.org/get-involved-with-rato-baltin

    Or If you feel like it, you can donate via bank transfer at: Banc Sabadell IBAN: ES23 0081 0900 8200 0430 1934 BIC: BSABESBB (your recurring donation will help us have a better planning of our budget to carry out the projects undertaken).

    Or take a look others ways to donate in http://beartsy.org/donate/

    Thank You! 🙂

  • Travel log – First conversation with a group of women in Rachuli (Kalikot)

    Travel log – First conversation with a group of women in Rachuli (Kalikot)

    26-5-2017.
    Our contact people in the area (all male) told us that here there was no Chhaupadi unlike in Achcham: that there are no special huts for women on their period, that they have a room inside their homes. However, during our journey we saw a few of them. There are some characteristics that make them easily recognisable: the plate to eat outdoors, the clothes in the sun, the door without any kind of lock.

    Our first conversation with a group of women was really interesting. At the beginning, we talked about superfluous things, they laughed with us and made questions to me and the nurses; until the moment they asked what were we doing here. With the nurses we have an agreement to never utter the word Chhaupadi or talk about the tradition, so our answer was: we are coming to the school to develop a programme about menstrual hygiene and sex education. We did not mention menstrual cups either.

    Right away they asked if we had brought something to give them. Our answer was: No. We have come to teach about menstruation. They started talking about menstruation, about what they do: depending on which house, there is a local divinity: if you have this god at home, you cannot be there while you are on your period, and you have to sleep with the animals. But only if you have this god (I need to find out how they decide whether there is such god in the houses or not). They can eat fruit, but not touch the fruit trees. They cannot drink cow milk, but they can drink buffalo milk. They cannot touch any male relative, not even their parents or eldest sons (they can touch the younger ones). No one else can touch the plates they used for eating, someone else has to give them the food and water they need. They cannot get close to the temples…
    The women without a local god at home can stay inside, but just in a special room for them. They cannot go out. The food and drink are brought inside by other members of the family.

    Next, and for the first time since we started project Rato Baltin, they kindly invited us to follow the rules in town, and asked us not to go into the school or temple if we were on our period. If that were the case, we would have to go back. Oops!

    In no occasion did they use the word impure, chhau, chhaupadi or anything similar. I do not know if it was because the nurses used the technical term, following the style of the girls, or because here they do not even name it, the Chhaupadi. We will have to see the pictures resulting from the participative photography workshop: let’s hope they will get more open towards us.

     

    Written by Clara Go. Photos done with FUJIFILM X-Pro1 © Clara Go 
Translated to English by Regla Maria López / Alba Miquel

    West Nepal girls need this kind of program. And we need help to continue the project!

    Now you can donate for paying one month salary to the nurse, or for some hygiene kit or for the menstrual cup control in September: http://beartsy.org/get-involved-with-rato-baltin

    Or If you feel like it, you can donate via bank transfer at: Banc Sabadell IBAN: ES23 0081 0900 8200 0430 1934 BIC: BSABESBB (your recurring donation will help us have a better planning of our budget to carry out the projects undertaken).

    Or take a look others ways to donate in http://beartsy.org/donate/

    Thank You! 🙂

  • Travel log – The way to Rachuli (Kalikot)

    Travel log – The way to Rachuli (Kalikot)

    May 25, 2017.

    Getting to Rachuli (pronounced RAH-chuli) took us 5 days. At the moment of writing this, I can’t imagine having to leave this place. The ways to get up here are mountain roads with very few paved parts. There are lots of rocks all around, landslides everywhere, heavy rocks in the middle of the way and fine sand in some areas. The rainy season is starting, we will see how it goes.

    To begin with, since it is spring in Kathmandu and therefore very rainy, all my luggage containing the workshop materials has been water-proofed. In local buses luggage is stacked on top, so I wrapped it in plastic, just in case it rained.

    On the fourth day of our journey, when we arrived to Manma (Kalikot), the bus stopped at a hostel by the bus station, and we were told to get out: we would stay there cause the night bus was not working. We checked the rooms and noticed they were horrible, but it was what was available. Staying there meant not having to unload all the stuff from the bus. We only took some personal items, the camera and the laptop.

    At 5 am, when we woke up, there were 15 cm of water in the room. My backpack containing my camera and laptop was soaked. The nurses’ clothing too. My mind had warned me about water… but never did I think water would come from the ground and not from the ceiling. I could not kill the man form the hostel, he said the water was clean, it came from the deposit which had overflown… In this sort of situations I would like to take the way of doing things in Nepal and break it in a million pieces.

    But I did not. I paid for my room and we went on to Rachuli: all soaked and amazed by the landscape. The name of Karnali Highway started to take a different dimension. These were incredible hills, framed with frightening sharp edges and heights which kept zig-zagging its way up and down.

    When we finally got there and stepped out of the bus, there was nobody to be seen. We enquired about the house we were staying in and it was just there. An old man helped us carry our stuff and Didi cooked us lunch…

    Written by Clara Go. Photos done with the phone © Clara Go
Translated to English by Regla Maria López / Alba Miquel

    West Nepal girls need this kind of program. And we need help to continue the project!

    Now you can donate for paying one month salary to the nurse, or for some hygiene kit or for the menstrual cup control in September: http://beartsy.org/get-involved-with-rato-baltin

    Or If you feel like it, you can donate via bank transfer at: Banc Sabadell IBAN: ES23 0081 0900 8200 0430 1934 BIC: BSABESBB (your recurring donation will help us have a better planning of our budget to carry out the projects undertaken).

    Or take a look to others ways to donate in http://beartsy.org/donate/

    Thank You! 🙂